A man from the Russian city of Perm recently made national headlines for cutting his own eyes in search of micro surveillance equipment and posting a video of the gruesome procedure online.

Alem Kulakhmedov’s story sounds like the topic of a modern cyber-surveillance thriller. A few months ago, he started experiencing bizarre symptoms like eye pains, stomach sickness and extreme tiredness. Alem says he went to see a doctor, but he couldn’t find anything that would explain his symptoms. This gave him some peace of mind and for a while, he managed to ignore his problems, but only until they started getting worse. The man recently told REN TV that he began losing consciousness for more than a day at a time. Whenever he woke up, he would find multiple scars on his body that looked like healing cuts.

When he noticed that his girlfriend knew details of his life that he didn’t remember sharing with her, Kulakhmedov became convinced that she and others had implanted surveillance cameras and microchips in his body to spy on him. He broke up with her, but even living on his own, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was constantly being monitored.

He changed his phone, bought scrambling devices, but nothing worked. In a desperate attempt to remove the surveillance cameras he became convinced were implanted in his eyes, Alem recently filmed himself removing the layer of tissue covering his cornea. The footage is too gruesome to post, but it most definitely does not look fake at all. In the video, Kulakhmedov claims that his eyes hurt constantly, he is always tired and painkillers are not effective. He also asks for tips from anyone who thinks they can help.